Gratitude Check Mamas How Do You Feel?


We feel good!  Oh We Feel So Good!  UH!

Remember that cheer from high school?  Or am I the only dork that still has that and others running through my head on occasion?

A few weeks back when I was feeling like Queen Grumperella, I opted to create a little Mama Bonding here around pet peeves that come with early parenting.  And I have to admit, I truly enjoyed it and loved all the comments from you all.

I think it’s important for everyone, but particularly for women, to talk about and purge what’s not working in our lives to clear it out and make space for peace and creating the life we do want. Talk it out. Exercise it out. Meditate it out during the daily poo. Whatever mode of excretion works best for ya.

A few years ago before I had my girls, I participated in this yummy Goddess circle one evening in which we all took paper and scribbled down everything about our lives that we couldn’t stand, mostly lies about ourselves that we no longer wanted to buy into.

We debated whether to burn them or transform them — and opted for the latter. I shredded my paper into 100 pieces and made the art you see here.

I tend to learn lessons over and over again. Like learning that running significantly alters my state of mind — in a good way.  It’s ridiculous how many times over the last 20+ years that I’ve said, “Oh yeah! I forgot about this!” And the lesson that I re-learned when going down the pet-peeve path recently is that when I focus on what’s wrong, my inner complaints tend to feed off of each other and pretty quickly all I see is what’s not working, what’s not not fun, what’s annoying, etc.  No bueno!

Thankfully I’ve gotten much better at cracking this little pattern in recent years with more self-awareness and a few tricks up my sleeve for redirecting thought patterns.

It’s all about finding the balance between the healthy expression of anger, sadness and disappointment and setting yourself up to move quickly from the purge into a new set of questions. Sound familiar? I know I’ve mentioned the idea of “Changing the Question” as an emotional coping mechanism several times here before.

What would make running this errand fun? What can I do to have my children and husband consistently experience my Love? How could I change my daily schedule to incorporate the me-time I need for my well-being?   What is perfect about my life right now?  What am I learning?  What am I grateful for?

And this brings me to the topic du jour.  Gratitude.

Please join me in making a list of everything you feel grateful for in your life.  This is an insightful part of the Power of Intention guided journaling exercise that I’ve come to love in recent months.  I haven’t committed time to it in the last few weeks and am inspired to kick start it again knowing how much more powerful focusing on what you want can be versus what you don’t.  Have any of you given the Power of Intention journaling a try? Curious to hear if it has impacted others in any way.

I’ll start the Gratitude list and welcome everyone to add their blessings through the comment section.

I am so grateful for:

  • My family — every member.  My husband, my sweet girls, my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law and niece and nephew and everyone on my husband’s side. I am so lucky to have this family.
  • My friends — near and far, old and new, I love each one dearly.
  • My home.
  • Our sweet housemate who is helping us so much with dinners and breakfasts and cleaning our kitchen and sitting with our girls one evening a week so we can go on dates. What a gift.
  • Our amazing nanny. We are so lucky to have someone so grounded, gentle, smart, creative and conscious about what children need emotionally to step in for us in caring for our angels while we work.
  • The project work that I received last month and all future work that will come my way in perfect time
  • Sweet Songs coming to life. My next post will give you all an update.
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4 Responses to “Gratitude Check Mamas How Do You Feel?”

  1. Barbie says:

    This was a great post Monica, I really, really enjoyed reading it. Not just your personal and in depth list, but just the feelings felt while reading it. I am a huge proponent of this and try my darndest to do this. I have a wonderful list that runs through my head daily, but what I do do is wake up each morning and actually say, whisper or think “THANK YOU”. Even with hangovers (believe it or not), I say it.

    So, for today I am grateful to have read your writing, so early in the morning 🙂

    Take care,
    Barbie

  2. Mammydiaries says:

    I’m grateful to be surrounded by so much love and support. My family and friends have no idea how much they give just by being…

  3. Amy says:

    I love this! I too am working towards living each day with intention and focusing on gratitude. I’ve learned a lot from reading The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal by Renee Trudeau and her blog The Journey (www.reneetrudeau.com). Are you familiar with her work?

    • Thank you Amy! I do know Renee. In fact I just attended my first “Business and Balance” meeting the other night that she hosts once every two months for entrepreneur Moms in Austin. I had approached her about sponsoring our Sweet Songs album and she offered for me to present the project to the women and is making our album their “cause of the month”. I believe she plans to blog about it on her blog. Sadly, I haven’t had time to read her self-renewal book. I did the free download of it last Mother’s Day….and just haven’t opened it from my computer. I kind of like turning pages when I read a book – so I may just have to go buy it. 🙂 Thanks so much for coming by and leaving a note!

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